1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns communications systems, such as the Internet. It is particularly directed to communications systems that distribute content among multiple different communications paths for transmission to a recipient and/or to communications systems that aggregate content from multiple different communications paths into a single composition.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a network client or any other entity receiving or downloading a large amount of data via a communications system is limited to downloading such data over a single communications path. For example, a client (or user) on the Internet typically is limited to downloading data from a particular source over a single analog telephone line (via an analog/digital modem), digital telephone line (ISDN or DSL), digital television cable or digital satellite link.
However, the present inventor has discovered that in the case of large data downloads a single communications path might be insufficient for the user's purpose. This is likely to be more and more true as users desire to download larger amounts of data, such as movies or videos, on-demand.